The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia

At Mount Pleasant, and in several of the more pretentious old Colonial mansions of Philadelphia, this type of door trim was elaborated by a surmounting frieze and heavy pediment above the architrave casing. The first floor hall at Mount Pleasant presents the interesting combination of a pulvinated Ionic pediment with a mutulary Doric cornice and frieze about the ceiling. Here one notices the flat dado and doors with raised and molded panels as contrasted with the paneled wainscot and bolection-molded, flat-paneled doors of the second-story hall. In this latter, also, some of the pediments are complete, others broken,192 illustrating another whim of the early American builders. Here the cornice is also Ionic with jig-sawed modillions, and the ensemble is generally more pleasing. In proportion and precision of workmanship this woodwork is hardly excelled in Philadelphia. The simple, carefully wrought dentil course of the doorheads lends a refining influence and pleasing sense of scale that seems to lighten the design very materially.

Philadelphia has no handsomer example of the enriched pedimental doorhead than the interior treatment of the entrance doorway of the Blackwell house, Number 224 Pine Street. Above the horizontal overhang of the architrave casing across the lintel two beautifully carved consoles, the width of the frieze in height, support a cornice which is the base of a broken pediment. The familiar Grecian band or double denticulated molding in the string course gives character to the cornice, while an attractive leaf decoration in applied composition adorns the recessed frieze panel. Projections of the cornice above the consoles lend an added touch of refinement. This elaboration of the white wood trim is further emphasized by the dark red-brown painting of the door to simulate old mahogany, which became a frequent feature of the houses of this period.

Round-headed doorways here and there, not only at the front entrance, but elsewhere, as in the hall193 at Hope Lodge, provided a welcome variation from the customary square-headed types and have been a pleasing feature of Colonial interiors since early times. As framing the glazed doorways of china closets already referred to, they were a charming feature of the interior wood finish. At the front entrance the round-headed doorway was utilized to provide an ornamental yet practical fanlight transom over the door which admitted considerable light to brighten the hall. As contrasted with this more graceful arrangement, the broad front entrance to Whitby Hall, with its severely plain unmolded four-panel double doors and wrought-iron strap hinges, bolts, latch and great rim lock, is of quaint interest. The accompanying photograph shows well the dado effect secured by a surbase and skirting, and one notes with interest the cornice with its prominent modillions and the heavy plinth blocks on which the architrave casings of the doors stand.

Round-headed windows were employed for landing windows in stair halls, as at Whitby Hall, and in the central part of the Palladian windows over entrances, as at Mount Pleasant, where they became decorative interior features of the front end of the second-floor halls.

Elliptical-headed openings are rare in Philadelphia, and in most instances were arches across the main hall, as at Hope Lodge. Sometimes they framed the staircase vista at the head or foot of194 the flight, where they became one of the most charming features of the best Colonial interiors.

The illustrations of interiors at Stenton accompanying this chapter, serve, as might many others, to show that white-painted interior woodwork, although one of the greatest charms of the Colonial house, finds its principal mission in providing the only architectural background that sets off satisfactorily the warmth of color and grace of line possessed by eighteenth-century furniture in mahogany and other dark woods. Bright and cheerful, chaste and beautiful, it emphasizes the beauties of everything before it, yet seldom forces itself into undue prominence. It is a scheme of interior treatment which has stood the test of time and indicates what excellent taste the Colonial builders manifested in resorting to its subtle influence to display their rare pieces of furniture brought from England and the Continent.

The admirable work of Philadelphia joiners indicates conclusively the many possibilities of white-painted soft woods. Unlike hardwood finish, the natural grain of the wood is concealed by painting, so that broad flat surfaces and simple moldings would be monotonous. Beauty of form is therefore substituted for the beauty of wood grain. Classic motives and detail are brought to bear upon the interior woodwork in such a manner as to delight the eye, yet not to detract unduly from the195 furnishings of the room. And the charm of much of the resulting woodwork indicates an early realization by American craftsmen of the fact that a nice balance between plain surface and decoration is as important as the decoration itself. It was by their facility in the design and execution of this woodwork that skilled wood-carvers were able to impart that lightness, grace and ingenuity of adaptation to which the Colonial style chiefly owes its charm.196

CHAPTER XII

Probably the most famous historical monument in the United States is Independence Hall, on Chestnut Street between Fifth and Sixth streets. Here the American nation really came into being and197 began to function, and here come thousands of visitors annually to view in awed admiration the greatest patriotic shrine of a free people. The building, designed by Andrew Hamilton, speaker of the Assembly, and built under his direction for the State House, was used for that purpose until 1799. The foundations were laid in 1731, and the main building was ready for occupancy in 1735, although the wings and steeple were not completed until 1751. The steeple was taken down in 1781, but was restored to its original condition by William Strickland in 1828, and further restorations of the building to its original condition were effected later by the city government. The east, or "Declaration" chamber, still appears substantially as it did when that famous document was signed, but the restoration of certain other rooms has been less satisfactory. The building has been set apart by the city, which purchased it from the State in 1816, as a museum of historical relics, and during the past century has been used by various public offices and societies.

Many famous buildings of Colonial times were the work of amateur architects, but this is without exception the finest contemporary administrative building in America; a noble building rich in glorious memories; nobler even than the Bulfinch State House at Boston or the Maryland State House at Annapolis. It is an enduring monument to198 Hamilton's versatility, showing that with his genius he might have won distinction as an architect no less than as a barrister. His sense of design, mass and proportion, his appreciation of the relative value and most effective uses of classic detail and his ability to harmonize the exigencies of the floor plan with attractive appearance were second to those of no professional architect of his time.

Independence Hall is a stately structure of exceptionally well-balanced symmetrical arrangement, beautiful alike in its general mass and minutest details, and presenting a delightful appearance from whatever viewpoint it is seen,—dignified, spacious and picturesque, a building that seems to typify the serenity of mind and steadfastness of purpose of those sturdy patriots who made it famous.

The structure comprises three parts; a large central building with hip-roofed wings for offices connected with the main building by open arcaded loggias. The present wings are restorations. Beyond the wings are two buildings erected after the close of the Revolution, but forming part of the group. That at the corner of Fifth and Chestnut streets was erected as the Philadelphia County Court House, while that at the corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets was the City Hall.

The entire group is of characteristic Philadelphia brick construction, delightfully mellowed by age, with marble and white-painted wood trim. The199 main building is two stories high with a decked gable roof, heavily balustraded between large, arched quadruple chimney stacks at each end, corners heavily quoined with marble and ends without fenestration other than a round bull's-eye window in each. Across the one hundred and seven feet of the Chestnut Street façade there is a range of nine broad, high, twenty-four-paned windows with flat gauged brick arches and high marble keystones, the central window being replaced by a simple, very high and deeply recessed doorway with a broad stone stoop before it. Tying into the keystones is a horizontal belt of marble across the entire front. A similar belt is located immediately beneath the window sills of the second story, and between the two belts and ranging with the windows are nine oblong marble panels set into the brickwork.

On the Independence Square façade everything is subordinated to the great square steeple-like clock tower, centrally located, which stands its entire height outside but adjoining the walls of the main building. In construction the lower two stories of the tower correspond to those of the building itself, and the cornice of the latter is effectively carried around the tower. Above, the tower rises two more stories of brick with pedimented and pilastered walls in the Ionic order and surmounted with classic urns and flame motives. Above this level the construction of the clock tower is of200 white-painted wood, one story with Corinthian pilasters and another balustraded, rising in four-sided diminutions to the octagonal, open arched belfry and superstructure, above which is a tapering pinnacle and gilt weathervane. It is a tower of grace, dignity and repose, a tower suggestive of ecclesiastical work, perhaps, yet withal in complete harmony with its situation and purpose. In the base of this tower is the main entrance, a simple and dignified pillared doorway in the mutulary Doric order with double four-panel doors, and a magnificent Palladian window in the Ionic order above, to which reference was made in a previous chapter. Thus three distinct orders of architecture are used in this tower alone, presenting another instance of the great freedom with which early American architects utilized their favorite motives.

Entering this doorway one comes into a great, square, lofty, brick-paved hall in the base of the tower where now reposes the Liberty Bell at the foot of what has often been called the finest staircase in America. And where, indeed, is to be found a more splendid combination of nicely worked white wood trim with touches of mahogany and dark green stairs? Done in the Ionic order, with a heavy cornice having carved modillions and a prominent dentil course, deeply embrasured windows with paneled jambs and broad sills supported by beautifully hand-tooled consoles, and a nicely201 spaced paneled wainscot, this entrance is a fitting frame for the broad winding staircase. Rising ramp after ramp by broad treads and low risers, it leads first to a broad landing in front lighted by the Palladian window over the entrance, and thence upward and around to a gallery across the opposite wall, where a broad double doorway with delightful fanlight above leads into the main hall of the second floor. To the right a narrow staircase rises to the belfry. The classic balustrade, with its mahogany-capped rail and simple landing newels is heavy but well proportioned; the paneled wainscot along the wall follows the contour of the ramped rail opposite, and the under side of the landings, gallery and upper runs are nicely paneled. Elaborately carved scroll brackets adorn the stair ends, and a harmonious floreated volute spiral band runs along the edge of the gallery; while the pilaster casings of the upper doorway and of the Palladian window are enriched with straight hanging garlands. At the foot of the staircase the newel treatment takes the scroll form of the Ionic volute, the rail and balusters on the circular end of the broad lower step winding around a central column like the landing newels.

Hanging from its original beam, but within an ornamental frame erected in the center of this staircase hall, is the best-known relic of the building, the famous Liberty Bell, which is supposed,202 without adequate evidence, to have been the first bell to announce the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. It was cast in England early in 1752 and bears the following inscription: "By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania for the State House in Philadelphia, 1752", and underneath: "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof, Lev. XXV, V, X." In August, 1752, the bell was received in Philadelphia, but was cracked by a stroke of the clapper the following month. It was recast, but the work being unsatisfactory, it was again recast with more copper, in Philadelphia during May, 1753, and in June was hung in the State House steeple, where it remained until taken to Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1777, to prevent it from falling into the hands of the British. In 1781 the bell was lowered and the steeple removed. In 1828 a new steeple was erected, and a new bell put in place, the Liberty Bell being given a place in an upper story of the tower to be rung only on occasions of great importance. On July 8, 1835, it suddenly cracked again while being tolled in memory of Chief Justice John Marshall, and on February 22, 1843, this crack was so increased as nearly to destroy its sound. In 1864 it was placed in the east or Declaration room, but in 1876, the Centennial year, it was again hung in the tower by a chain of thirteen links. From the time of its second recasting in203 1753, until it lost its sound in 1843, the Liberty Bell was sounded on all important occasions, both grave and gay. It convened town meetings and the Assembly, proclaimed the national anniversary, ushered in the new year, welcomed distinguished men, tolled for the honored dead, and on several occasions was muffled and tolled as an expression of public disapproval of various acts of British tyranny.

Passing through a high, round-headed arch with paneled jambs and soffit one enters the central hall, a magnificent apartment in the mutulary Doric order, extending through the building to the Chestnut Street entrance. Fluted columns standing on a high, broad pedestal which runs about the walls like a wainscot, support a heavy complete entablature enriched with beautifully hand-carved moldings, notably an egg and dart ovolo between cornice and frieze and foliated moldings about the mutules and the panels of the soffit and metopes. It is a hall of charming vistas in a noble architectural frame,—straight ahead to the Chestnut Street entrance; back through the great single arch to the staircase; to the left through an arcade of three pilastered arches into the west or Supreme Court chamber; to the right through a broad, double doorway into the east or "Declaration" room, the original Assembly chamber.

The treatment of the latter wall of the hall is most204 elaborate. Three cased arches correspond to the open arches opposite. On the wall within the two end ones are handsome, pedimental-topped, inscribed tablets, while in the middle one is located the doorway with an ornate, broken, pedimental doorhead taking the form of a swag.

Like the hall, the Supreme Court chamber is Doric with fluted pilasters instead of engaged columns, and walls entirely paneled up. There are three windows at each end and two back of the judge's bench with its paneled platform and rail, and balustraded staircases at each end. In this room the convention to form a new constitution for Pennsylvania met July 15, 1776, and unanimously approved the Declaration of Independence, and pledged the support of the State. Delegates to Congress were elected who were signers of the Declaration. In this room now stands the statue of Washington carved out of a single block of wood by Colonel William Rush, after Stuart.

Across the hall is the Declaration chamber, forty feet and two inches long, thirty-nine feet and six inches wide and nineteen feet and eight inches high. As in size, its architecture is substantially the same as the chamber opposite, and like it the two corners near the hall are rounding. Also it is of spacious appearance, light, beautiful and cheerful, a room to inspire noble deeds. Instead of the high judge's bench at the side opposite the entrance, there is a205 relatively small platform or dais of two steps on which stands the presiding officer's desk in front of a large, elaborate, pedimental-topped frame with exquisitely enriched carved moldings, within which is a smaller frame containing a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence. To either side, between fluted pilasters, are segmental arched fireplaces with heavy mantel shelves above, supported by carved consoles, while beyond these are single doors with pedimental heads. Otherwise the room is substantially like that across the hall. They are regarded as the best of the restored rooms of the building, and of the two the courtroom is perhaps rather the better in its greater simplicity.

In the east or so-called Declaration chamber, the second Continental Congress met May 10, 1775; George Washington was chosen commander in chief of the Continental Army June 15, 1775; and the Declaration of Independence was adopted July 4, 1776. The American officers taken prisoners at the Battle of Brandywine, September 11, and of Germantown, October 4, 1777, were held here as prisoners of war, and on July 9, 1778, the Articles of Confederation and perpetual union between the States were signed here by representatives of eight States. The room contains much of the furniture of those days. The table and high-backed Chippendale chair of mahogany used by the presidents of the Continental Congress and206 occupied by John Hancock at the signing still remain, and on the table is to be seen the silver ink-stand with its quill box and sand shaker, in which the delegates dipped their pens in autographing the famous document. There are also fourteen of the original chairs used by delegates. On the walls hang portraits of forty-five of the fifty-six signers, also a portrait of Washington by Rembrandt Peale.

In fact, the collection of portraits is largely based on canvases secured from the famous Peale Museum which at one time occupied the upper floors of the building. There are also valuable paintings by Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, Edgar Pine, Thomas Sully and Allan Ramsay. The bronze statue of Washington standing in front of Independence Hall on Chestnut Street is a replica of the original one in white marble by Bailey, which was removed on account of its disintegration. Forty-five crayons and pastels by John Sharpless, purchased by the city in 1876, form a notable collection estimated to be worth half a million dollars. What is supposed to be the earliest exhibition of paintings ever held in America was that of Robert Edge Pine, which occurred in Independence Hall in 1784.

On the second floor the principal room is a great banqueting hall extending across the entire building on the Chestnut Street side with its range of nine windows and having a fireplace at each end. There are smaller rooms on each side of the broad entrance207 corridor; its wide, flat arch has four fluted columns supporting a heavy pedimental head with elliptical fanlight. Architecturally the restoration of the second floor is less happy than that of the first. It is not in the spirit of the work below; nor does it accord with typical Colonial work of pre-Revolutionary days. It lacks that simple, straight-forward dignity of design; that fine sense of proportion; that refinement and appropriateness of detail. The spacing of the paneling of both the wainscot and the fireplace mantels is not characteristic; the detail of the latter is poorly chosen and assembled, and the whole aspect, especially the entrance arch, suggests a studied effort to achieve picturesque effect.

On the northwest corner of Independence Square, which is the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut streets, is old Congress Hall, erected in 1787, in which Congress sat from 1790 to 1800, and in which Washington was inaugurated in 1793 for a second term with Adams as vice-president, and in which Adams, in 1797, was inaugurated president with Jefferson as vice-president.

Here Washington presented his famous message concerning Jay's treaty with England; here, toward the close of his second administration, he pronounced his farewell address, which is still regarded as a model of dignity and farsightedness. Here, too, was officially announced the death of208 Washington, when John Marshall offered a resolution that a joint committee of the House and Senate consider "the most suitable manner of paying honor to the memory of the man first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen", thus originating a phrase never to be forgotten in America. For some years after 1800 the building was occupied by the criminal courts, now located in the City Hall.

Were it not so near the more pretentious Independence Hall, this demure little building would receive much more attention, for it is architecturally a gem of the Colonial period, and such of its interior woodwork as has been restored has been more happily treated than is often the case. It is an oblong structure of brick, with marble and white wood trim, two stories high, hip-roofed and surmounted in the center by a well-proportioned, octagonal open cupola. On the front a pediment springs from the cornice over a slightly projecting central section of the façade, while a three-sided bay breaks the rear wall and enlarges the building. The stoop and doorway are of simple dignity, the double doors having the appearance of being four separate, very narrow four-panel doors, and the graceful fanlight above being in accord with the round-headed windows of the lower story. These windows are set effectively in brick arches with marble sills, keystones and imposts. On the upper209 story the windows are twenty-four-paned and square-headed with gauged brick arches and marble keystones. Under the central front window over the entrance there is a handsome wrought-iron fire balcony. The best exterior feature of the building is the beautifully hand-tooled cornice with its coved member having a series of recessed arches and the well-known Grecian band or double denticulated molding beneath. At the second-floor level a white marble belt accords well with the general scheme.

No less interesting than the outward appearance of the entrance is its inward aspect, with its deeply paneled embrasures and soffit, its quaint strap hinges and rim lock. The arrangement of the double staircases with a halfway landing in this lofty, airy stair hall compels admiration for effective simplicity. The stair ends are unadorned, but the spaces under the lower run of both flights are nicely paneled up. The balusters are of good, though familiar pattern, and the lines of the dark ramped rail gracefully drawn.

Interest centers in the Senate chamber with its barrel ceiling and panel-fronted galleries along both sides supported by slender round columns. Here momentous business was transacted during the early years of the American nation, and many relics of those troublous times are here preserved. In the bay at the rear end the President's dais has been210 restored from remains found beneath an old platform. It is of graceful design with free-flowing curves and an elliptical swell front where the balustrade has a solid three-panel insert. The turned balusters are of slender grace, while the paneled pilasters or newels at the ends and corners are adorned with straight hanging garlands in applied work. There is also a festooned border in applied work above the opening into the bay that is carried about the room above the galleries. The central decoration of the ceiling and the eagle over the President's dais furnish excellent examples of eighteenth-century frescoes.

A short distance east of Independence Square, in a narrow court off Chestnut Street, between South Third and South Fourth streets, hedged about by high modern office buildings that dwarf its size, is Carpenters' Hall, in which the first Continental Congress assembled, September 5, 1774, and in which the National Convention, in 1787, framed the present Constitution of the United States. The building was also the headquarters of the Pennsylvania Committee of Correspondence; the basement was used as a magazine for ammunition during the Revolution, and from 1791 to 1797 the whole of it was occupied by the first United States Bank.

The Carpenters' Company, established in 1724, was patterned after the Worshipful Company of211 Carpenters of London, which dates back to 1477, and the early organization of such a guild in America indicates the large number and high character of the Colonial builders of Philadelphia and explains the excellence of the architecture in this neighborhood. The present building was begun in 1770, but was not completed until 1792, so that throughout the Revolutionary period it was used in a partly finished condition. Since 1857 it has been preserved wholly for its historic associations. Here was conceived that liberty which had its birth in Independence Hall, so that its claim to fame is second only to the latter. Like it, too, there are many interesting relics of those glorious days to be seen within. An inscription on a tablet outside very properly reads, "Within these walls, Henry, Hancock, and Adams inspired the delegates of the Colonies with nerve and sinew for the toils of war."

The building is in the form of a Greek cross with four projecting gable ends and an octagonal cupola of graceful design and proportions at the center of the roof. It is of characteristic Philadelphia brickwork, with handsomely cased twenty-four-paned windows shuttered on the lower floor. The entrance façade, with its broad, high stoop and pedimental doorway, double doors and fanlight above; its pleasing fenestration, especially the round-headed, Palladian windows of the second floor, above balustrade sections resting on a horizontal belt of white at the212 second-floor level, and its pediment with a handsome hand-tooled cornice in which an always pleasing Grecian band is prominent, does credit to its design, and altogether the structure was worthy of its purpose.

Within, the meeting room is of surprisingly generous size, considering the small impression given by the exterior aspect of the building. The restored woodwork is unfortunate, yet the general effect of bygone years remains.

For two centuries Philadelphia has been justly famous for its public markets, numerous and readily accessible to the entire community. Marketing has ever been one of the duties of the thrifty housewife, to which Philadelphia women have given particular attention, and everything possible has been done to make the task easy and satisfactory to them. When the city was first laid out its few wide streets, with the exception of Broad Street, were laid out for the convenience of markets, which in those days were placed in their center. A few of these old-time markets still remain, notably that at Second and Pine streets, its market house or central building of quaintly interesting design embracing features such as the octagonal cupola, marble lintels, sills and belt, and the elliptical and semicircular fanlights which are typically Colonial.

To Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia is largely indebted for the Pennsylvania Hospital fronting on213 Pine Street between South Eighth and South Ninth streets, the first hospital in the United States, which was projected in 1751, erected in 1755 and still continues to be the foremost of some one hundred institutions in the city. The main building was designed by Samuel Rhodes, mayor of Philadelphia, and in architectural excellence is regarded as second only to Independence Hall.

Individuals gave funds freely for its erection; the British Parliament turned over to it some funds unclaimed by a land company; Bishop Whitefield gave a considerable sum; Benjamin West painted a replica of his famous work, "Christ Healing the Sick", now in the entrance hall, which was exhibited and earned four thousand pounds sterling in admissions; some players gave "Hamlet" for the benefit of the hospital, and money was raised in numerous other ways.

The building is a large and beautiful one of noble appearance, three stories high, having long, balanced wings two and a half stories high, with dormers and an octagon tower over the cross wings at each end. The total frontage is some two hundred and seventy-five feet. It is of reddish-brown brick, faced on the front of the first story of the main building with gray marble, and pierced by two large round-topped windows each side of a central doorway with a balustraded stoop and handsome semicircular fanlight and side lights. Above, six 214 Corinthian pilasters support a beautifully detailed entablature at the eaves, from which springs a pediment with ornamental oval window. Surmounting the hip roof is a square superstructure of wood, paneled and painted white, above which is a low octagonal belvedere platform with a huge, round balustrade. Brick walls and an ornamental wistaria-clad iron fence surround the grounds, and no visitor has entered the central gate since La Fayette.

Within the building there is much splendid interior wood finish. Its best feature, however, is the high, broad hall, with fluted Ionic columns supporting a mutulary Doric entablature, leading back to a double winding staircase, which is a marvelous work of art, combining the simplicity and purity as well as the beauty of the middle Georgian period. There are two landings on each flight, and from the spiral newels at the bottom the balustrades with ramped rails and heavy, turned balusters swing upward, as do the staircases, to the third floor. One notes with interest the unusual outline of the brackets under the overhang of the stair treads.

A few important public buildings of Philadelphia that were not erected until early in the nineteenth century had their inception directly or indirectly in the outgrowth of the War of Independence, and their omission would render any treatise of the215 public buildings of the city noticeably incomplete. Their inclusion here finds still further justification in the fact that they are of classic architecture and so to a degree in accord with Colonial traditions.

The Custom House, a classic stone structure, on the south side of Chestnut Street between Fourth and Fifth streets, was built for the second United States Bank, authorized by Congress in April, 1816, because of the bad financial condition into which the government had fallen during the War of 1812. The building was designed by William Strickland, in his day the leading American architect, being modeled after the Parthenon of Athens. It was completed in 1824 and was put to its present use in 1845.

The main building of Girard College on Girard Avenue between North 19th and North 25th streets, of which Thomas Ustick Walter, a pupil of Strickland's, was the architect, is one of the finest specimens of pure Greek architecture in America. Indeed, this imposing Corinthian structure of stone has been called "the most perfect Greek temple in existence." Work upon it was begun in 1833, and the college was opened January 1, 1848. To a sarcophagus in this main building were removed the remains of Stephen Girard in 1851. The building is 111 feet wide and 169 feet long, and is surrounded by thirty-four fluted columns fifty-six feet high and seven feet in diameter at the base, which216 cost thirteen thousand dollars each. The total height of the building is ninety-seven feet, and it is arched throughout with brick and stone, and roofed with marble tiles. The weight of the roof is estimated at nearly one thousand tons.

The old Stock Exchange at Third and Walnut and Dock streets, facing a broad open space once an old-time market, is also the work of William Strickland, who likewise designed St. Paul's Church, St. Stephen's Church, the almshouse and the United States Naval Asylum. It is an impressive round-fronted classic structure of gray stone in the Corinthian order, with a semicircular colonnade above the first story supporting a handsomely executed entablature with conspicuous antefixes about the cornice. Instead of a central flight of steps leading to a main entrance, there were two well-designed flights at each side. Surmounting the whole is a daring, tall, round cupola, its roof supported by engaged columns and the spaces between pierced by classic grilles. The structure is notable throughout for excellence in mass and detail.

At Number 116 South Third Street stands the oldest banking building in America, and withal one of the handsomest of such buildings. Erected in 1795 by the first Bank of the United States, this beautiful stone and brick structure in the Corinthian order, with its fine pedimental portico bearing in high relief a modification of the seal of the United217 States, was owned and occupied by Stephen Girard from 1812 to 1831, and since 1832 by the Girard Bank and the Girard National Bank. It is one of those classic structures which by reason of nicety in proportion and precision in detail still compares favorably with the best modern buildings of the city. The high, fluted columns and pilasters with their nicely wrought capitals lend an imposing nobility that immediately arrests attention, while the refinement of detail throughout well repays careful scrutiny. In this latter respect its best features are the cornice with its beautifully enriched moldings and modillions, the balustrade above, the window heads supported by hand-tooled consoles and the insert panels under the portico.

The first Bank of the United States was incorporated in 1791 with a capital of ten million dollars. It was the first national bank of issue essential to the system of banking built up by Alexander Hamilton in organizing the finances of the Federal Government under the constitution of 1789. It issued circulating notes, discounted commercial paper and aided the government in its financial operations. Although the government subscribed one-fifth of the capital, it was paid for by a roundabout process which actually resulted in the loan of the amount by the bank to the treasury. Other loans were made by the bank to the government, until by the end of 1795 its obligations had reached $6,200,000.218 In order to meet these obligations, the government gradually disposed of its bank stock and by 1802 had sold its entire holdings at a profit of $671,860. A statement submitted to Congress January 24, 1811, by Albert Gallatin, then Secretary of the Treasury, showed resources of $24,183,046, of which $14,578,294 was in loans and discounts, $2,750,000 in United States stock and $5,009,567 in specie.

The expiration of the charter of the bank, in 1811, was the occasion for a party contest which prevented renewal and added greatly to the financial difficulties of the government during the War of 1812. Although foreign stockholders were not permitted to vote by proxy, and the twenty-five directors were required to be citizens of the United States, the bank was attacked on the ground of foreign ownership, and it was also claimed that Congress had no constitutional power to create such an institution.

Thereupon the bank building and the cashier's house in Philadelphia were purchased at a third of the original cost by Girard, who, in May, 1812, established the Bank of Stephen Girard and thereafter assisted the government very materially. He was, in fact, the financier of the War of 1812.

No less interesting than the governmental and commercial public buildings of Philadelphia are its churches, of which several of noble architecture date back to the Colonial period.219

On North Second Street, just north of Market, is located Christ Church, Protestant Episcopal, the first diocesan church of Pennsylvania. It is a fine old building designed mainly by Doctor John Kearsley, a vestryman and physician. The corner stone was laid in 1727, and the building was completed in 1744, but the steeple, in part designed by Benjamin Franklin and containing a famous chime of eight bells, was not erected until 1754. Franklin was one of the managers of a lottery in 1753 for raising funds for the steeple and bells, the latter being imported at a cost of five hundred pounds sterling. On July 4, 1776, after the Declaration of Independence had been read, these bells "rang out a merry chime."

This imposing edifice eloquently indicates what architectural triumphs can be achieved in brickwork in the Colonial style. Apart from the spire, interest centers in the fenestration, which has already been treated in Chapter VIII, and in the wood trim. As in much contemporary architecture, the woodwork is conspicuous for the free use of the orders. For example, one immediately notes the mutulary Doric cornice and frieze along the sides, and the pulvinated Ionic entablature across the chancel gable above the Palladian window. The roof is heavily balustraded in white-painted wood with the urns on the several pedestals holding torches with carved flames. A brick belfry rises square and220 sturdy above the roof and then continues upward in diminishing construction of wood, first virtually four-sided, then octagonal and finally in a low, tapering spire surmounted by a weather-vane. A distinctive feature is the simple iron fence along the street with two wrought-iron arched gates, as beautiful as any in America, hung from high, ball-topped stone posts.

Imposing in its simplicity, the interior is generally Doric in character, but the Ionic entablatures over the side sections of the beautiful Palladian chancel window reflect the treatment outside. Fluted columns standing on high pedestals, with square, Doric entablature sections above, support graceful, elliptical arches, which separate the nave from the aisles in which are panel-fronted galleries. The organ loft over the main entrance is bow-fronted and highly ornate.

Certain alterations to the interior were made in 1836, and in 1882 it was restored to its ancient character, but the high old-fashioned wineglass pulpit of 1770 remains, as does the font. A silver bowl, weighing more than five pounds, presented in 1712 by Colonel Quarry of the British Army, is still in use, while a set of communion plate presented by Queen Anne in 1708 is brought forth on special occasions. The brass chandelier for candles has hung in its central position since 1749. Bishop White officiated as rector during221 Revolutionary days, and his body lies under the altar. Many well-known figures of American history worshiped here, both Washington and Franklin maintaining pews which are still preserved. That in which Washington sat was placed in Independence Hall in 1836.